In just a few short weeks, Bookhouse Studio will be transformed into a winter wonderland. I’ll fill the space with all kinds of chilly fun inspired by the totally adorable new book, First Snow. Best of all, the talented illustrator Talitha Shipman will be joining us at the Bookhouse, reading the story and showing us a little bit of the magic behind the book!

I’ve crafted up a storm of these huge paper snowflakes in preparation- ready for some tiny artists to beautify with a splash of color! Though the twists and turns look impressive, the steps are not too complicated. Here’s how I did it:

Materials:

6 sheets of paper (per snowflake)

scissors

clear tape

stapler

Steps:

Trim your rectangle sheets of paper to squares:

I use the tried-and-true triangle method, folding and trimming off the edge

2. Fold your square into a triangle (if it’s not one already!)

3. Fold into a triangle again, using the picture below as a guide:

4. Make three cuts across the triangle, not quite to the end (from right to left if your triangle is folded like mine).

5. Open up your folded triangle. Hopefully it looks like the picture below!

6. Curl up the two innermost flaps and tape together.

7. Flip over the paper (don’t forget that part!), curl together the next two flaps, and tape.

8. Continue to flip, curl, tape until you have something like this:

9. Repeat, repeat, repeat! You need to do the same process of steps 1-8 to all six sheets of paper.

10. Phew. Okay. You’re almost done! Take three of those amazing looking spirals in your hand and staple them together at one end.

11. Use two more staples to connect each spiral to its neighbor. There will be a little bit of a flat spot where they rest next to one another. That’s the perfect spot!

12. Do the same thing with the other three spirals: Staple the ends together and staple each one to its neighbor.

13. Now you should have two halves of a snowflake. Simply staple those ends to one another, staple the sides, and voila!

These are totally gorgeous as-is, but if you want to take it to the next level, set up your little one with some watercolors (we’ll be using blue and purple liquid watercolors from Discount School Supply) and let them go to town on this seriously unique canvas!